Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the Climate Crisis is upon us. My question – did anyone notice the crisis?
Climate change indicators and impacts worsened in 2020
Tags: ClimateClimate change19
Published
19 April 2021
Press Release Number: 190420212020 was one of three warmest years on record, despite cooling La Niña
Extreme weather and COVID-19 combined in a double blow
New York/Geneva, 19 April 2021 (WMO) – Extreme weather combined with COVID-19 in a double blow for millions of people in 2020. However, the pandemic-related economic slowdown failed to put a brake on climate change drivers and accelerating impacts, according to a new report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and an extensive network of partners.
The report on the State of the Global Climate 2020 documents indicators of the climate system, including greenhouse gas concentrations, increasing land and ocean temperatures, sea level rise, melting ice and glacier retreat and extreme weather. It also highlights impacts on socio-economic development, migration and displacement, food security and land and marine ecosystems.
2020 was one of the three warmest years on record, despite a cooling La Niña event. The global average temperature was about 1.2° Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. The six years since 2015 have been the warmest on record. 2011-2020 was the warmest decade on record.
“It has been 28 years since the World Meteorological Organization issued the first state of the climate report in 1993, due to the concerns raised at that time about projected climate change. While understanding of the climate system and computing power have increased since then, the basic message remains the same and we now have 28 more years of data that show significant temperature increases over land and sea as well as other changes like sea level rise, melting of sea ice and glaciers and changes in precipitation patterns. This underscores the robustness of climate science based on the physical laws governing the behaviour of the climate system,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
“All key climate indicators and associated impact information provided in this report highlight relentless, continuing climate change, an increasing occurrence and intensification of extreme events, and severe losses and damage, affecting people, societies and economies. The negative trend in climate will continue for the coming decades independent of our success in mitigation. It is therefore important to invest in adaptation. One of the most powerful ways to adapt is to invest in early warning services and weather observing networks. Several less developed countries have major gaps in their observing systems and are lacking state of the art weather, climate and water services.” said Prof. Taalas.
Prof. Taalas joined United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in launching WMO’s flagship report at a press conference on 19 April. It comes ahead of the 22-23 April virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, convened by the United States of America. President Biden is seeking to galvanize efforts by the major economies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet the targets of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to keep temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, and to 1.5°C if possible.
“This report shows that we have no time to waste. The climate is changing, and the impacts are already too costly for people and the planet. This is the year for action. Countries need to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. They need to submit, well ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, ambitious national climate plans that will collectively cut global emissions by 45 per cent compared to 2010 levels by 2030. And they need to act now to protect people against the disastrous effects of climate change,” said the UN Secretary-General.
In 2020, COVID-19 added a new and unwelcome dimension to weather, climate and water-related hazards, with wide-ranging combined impacts on human health and well-being. Mobility restrictions, economic downturns and disruptions to the agricultural sector exacerbated the effects of extreme weather and climate events along the entire food supply chain, elevating levels of food insecurity and slowing the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The pandemic also disrupted weather observations and complicated disaster risk reduction efforts.
The report illustrates how climate change poses a risk to the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals, through a cascading chain of interrelated events. These can contribute to reinforcing or worsening existing inequalities. In addition, there is the potential for feedback loops which threaten to perpetuate the vicious cycle of climate change.
Information used in this report is sourced from a large number of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and associated institutions, as well as Regional Climate Centres. UN partners include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization.
It updates a provisional version released in December 2020 and is accompanied by a story map on global climate indicators.
…
Read more: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/climate-change-indicators-and-impacts-worsened-2020
This is it? Did anyone experience climate change so severe you now want to volunteer to pay more tax to fix it? Or is the World Meteorological Organisation claim that we are already experiencing an unaffordable expensive climate crisis overblown nonsense?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Why is it that nobody ever mentions the +/- error range when talking about this so-called global temperature? Maybe because nobody knows what it is? I have searched gov websites looking for it, no luck.
[Please fix the misspelling of your email autopopulated by your browser-mod]
The regional patterns like a wet Sahel and dry southeast Africa, dry southern Australia, wet southern India and China but drier in the north, are all a low solar driving warmer ocean phases pattern. The heatwaves in August and September 2020 were discretely solar driven by the fastest solar coronal hole streams in a year, and are a cause and not a product of climate change. I had those heatwaves predicted at over a year ahead.
https://solen.info/solar/coronal_holes.html
Expect this Blarney Science to increase until November 12th in Glasgow. UNFCC COP 26.
By all objective measures, people have more to eat, better health care, and more affordable goods than ever before. If this is a crisis, we could use a lot more of it.
That is the crisis they are so upset about. Got to drive people into poverty and misery so they are all equal.
There is a saying that the most terrifying words you will hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Perhaps we should add “I’m from the World x Organisation…”
When are these people going to explain how this proposed Co2 reduction plan is going to work , Who will administer it and most importantly, what will it cost?
the “information sources” tell me what I guessed
another fearmongering stunt to try n force OWG and eu-centric money and regs on the world
middle digit raised!
meanwhile in aus tonight i heard some blithering idiot from our mil(retired maybe) saying panic panic no co2 by 2030
Post modern science is no longer science. It is activism.
Disagreeing with the ‘consensus’ gets you disappeared, that is canceled. Dissenters get harassed online, have their social media accounts blocked and sometimes they lose their jobs.
Merging the roles of Chicken Little and Foxy Loxy: Foxy Loxy does not want to wait for the ignorant masses in the barnyard so he dresses as Chicken Little and tries to stampede the barnyard animals into a panic.
I am very skeptical of any claim that the last year was the warmest or third warmest. Why, because all these calcuulations modify or fix the data so it comes out thhe way they want. This is not science/ It is propaganda.
We have records of regukar climatic changes in the preindustrial historic periods
in all cases higher temperatures were associated with higher human growth rates and lower ones were associated with crop failures and famine
Yep, those pesky facts getting in the way again.
“2020 was one of the three warmest years on record, despite a cooling La Nina event.” WMO doesn’t appear to know that global air temperature lags La Nina effect by about six months. UAH satellite data shows global air temps are starting to decrease.